Nemuro City Museum of History and Nature

The red-brick building in which the museum is housed dates to 1942, when it was built for a communications detail from the Imperial Japanese Navy Ōminato Guard District. Repurposed after the war as the schoolhouse for Hanasakiminato Junior School, after the school relocated to new premises, from 1990 it served, as the , for storage, research into, and the display of materials relating to the area's natural and cultural history. Since October 2004, with its name changed to Nemuro City Museum of History and Nature, it has operated as a museum-equivalent facility, designated in accordance with the Museum Act. ==Collection==

, on which Adam Laxman sailed to Japan The collection of some forty thousand items Japan has used boundary stones to define its territory; cf. Painting 75 at the Meiji Memorial Picture Gallery) (国境標石); items relating to the sea otters of the Kuriles; cannery labels (cf. the Nemuro Straits Coastal Cannery Labels that are part of Japan Heritage "Story" #084); a dogū and other grave goods excavated from the (a Prefectural Tangible Cultural Property); and ceramics, including Urahoro-style Jōmon pottery of c. 7,500 BC, a Jōmon pot of c. 4,000 BC adorned with a bear that is the oldest animal design found to date in eastern Hokkaidō (a Municipal Tangible Cultural Property), and ceramics of the later Okhotsk and Satsumon cultures. ==See also==